Friday, January 28, 2011

Musue* (for Museum, etc.)

I'm not exactly the standing on a chair screaming type; nor, on the other hand, am I one to welcome the humble Mus musculus (or "house mouse") into my own home without reservations. Few people are, of course, but Dorothy Lathrop, an Albany-based children's author (and winner of the first Caldecott Medal), along with her sister Gertrude, a sculptor, were. They shared quarters with a wide assortment of animals, kind of like Dr. Dolittle did, keeping them both as pets and as models for their art. This unusual living arrangement was paid homage to, appropriately enough, by Kate Spohn, who had once been the women's teenaged gardener, in a book she later wrote called By Word of Mouse. There were 102 instances of Musue* in OhioLINK today, and "too many records found for your search" in WorldCat. There's no need to get out the pesticides and traps just yet, but you will want to muscle these little ones out the door as soon as possible.